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Star Wars Battlefront Game Trailer Is So Realistic It Looks Like Movie Footage

Posted by timothy on from the cgi-is-cheaper-than-actors dept.

MojoKid writes It has been a tremendous week for Star Wars fans. First we got to see Han Solo and Chewbacca make an emotional reappearance in the newest Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer (the second official trailer Disney has put out). Now, Electronic Arts is treating us to a visual smorgasbord of cinema-quality footage showing the forthcoming Star Wars Battlefront game. Battlefront will support to up 40 players divided between the Rebel Alliance and Galactic Empire, all shooting it out and playing with some of the coolest Star Wars vehicles and weapons around. We're talking jetpacks, AT-AT war machines, AT-STs, TIE Fighters, X-wings, and more. Though the trailer allegedly shows actually "game engine footage," it's questionable whether or not it's actual gameplay or just pre-rendered cut scenes from the game engine. Either way, it's still pretty impressive.

31 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Render farm? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do they give you a render farm to run this thing on for free, or do you have to buy that yourself?

    1. Re:Render farm? by Cley+Faye · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ignoring the fact that EA is involved and will probably screw customers one way or another, what part of "game engine footage" did you miss?

    2. Re:Render farm? by taustin · · Score: 2

      You probably believe that movies "inspired by the title of a true story" bear some resemblance to the actual events, too.

    3. Re:Render farm? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      I would assume that the previous AC either made a typo or isn't a native speaker of English.

      Yeah. He might be American.

      ducks

    4. Re:Render farm? by maugle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes... and we've certainly never been misled by "game engine footage" before.
      *cough*Killzone*cough*
      *cough*Watchdogs*cough*

    5. Re:Render farm? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I missed absolutely nothing. Just because a cinematic was rendered using the same engine as the game does not, in any form, indicate that the game will look anything close to that. It is a completely pre-rendered video. It is *very* common for companies to use their engine to create these sorts of pre-rendered videos using models and techniques that will most definitely not be used in the game.

    6. Re:Render farm? by edittard · · Score: 2

      Wrong on two counts. One, "you fucking American idiot" doesn't have a finite verb so it's not a complete sentence. Had he written "you're a..." you might have a point.

      Two, it's correct to use a comma to separate the addressee. http://www.grammarerrors.com/p...

      Many people here omit it, sometimes changing the meaning somewhat.

      "There's an orange, doctor" vs. "There's an orange doctor"

      --
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  2. Questionable? by Nemyst · · Score: 5, Insightful

    it's questionable whether or not it's actual gameplay or just pre-rendered cut scenes from the game engine.

    It's not questionable at all. When devs actually use in-game footage, they'll rub it in your face in every way possible. In-engine footage is marketing speak for "We wish we could do something like that, but right now it's running at 2 fps on SLI Titan Xs and all the animations are static".

    1. Re:Questionable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      totally pre-rendered - disclaimer at end makes it pretty clear demo of the 'game engine' not actual gameplay

    2. Re:Questionable? by rudy_wayne · · Score: 2

      I think we all know that EA is lying and actually gameplay won't look like that.

      But, more importantly, the phrase "So Realistic It Looks Like Movie Footage" is now meaningless. Yes, it does look "just like a movie" due to the fact that many scenes from movies are now done almost entirely in CGI.

    3. Re:Questionable? by tsa · · Score: 3, Funny

      In reality it looks like this.

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      -- Cheers!

  3. Photo realistic? by __aardcx5948 · · Score: 2

    Sure, the lightning is good. But photo realistic? Not even close. It looks awesome but come on.

    1. Re:Photo realistic? by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I would say even the scorpion king looked better than rubber neo vs plastic smith clones in Matrix II, that wasn't even cartoon, it looked like something off of robot chicken lol.

      As for the trailer? Everybody just has to face reality and reality is 1.- The 2 new "next gen" consoles are AMD netbook APUs with GPUs that would run around $130-$150 USD, the fanboys can scream and gnash their teeth but anybody that looks at the AMD whitepapers on the jaguar arch will see its not even on the level of the Athlon wrt most functions, much less an FX or i5/i7, 2.- The Steam hardware survey gives those designing on the PC side a good idea where the "sweet spot" to get the most customers will be and last I checked that is GPUs in the $100-$150 range and quad core CPUs, and 3.- With current technology the only way you would even get close to that is a pair of XFire or SLI'd top o' the line cards and even then I doubt you'd even hit 30 fps.

      So unless they come up with a way to make technology such as ray tracing and the rendering of tens of millions to hundreds of millions of polygons a LOT cheaper? Yeah you aren't gonna see anything like that, I don't care if your PC cost more than a new car. It certainly isn't gonna even be in the same ballpark with a PS4 or XB1 which is the platform that will be the primary focus of the devs, no way in hell.

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  4. Gameplay is king by Iamthecheese · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's obviously not straight from a player's POV, no one switches views that fast, and there's no way it's smart enough to give the right one of the tens of points of view in the first part of the video.

    It also doesn't look like a movie, not a high-budget one anyway. With the luxury of pre-rendering movies are already 15 years beyond those plastic faces. But enough complaining. Did you see the actor covering his face from the explosion? The smooth teamwork? The variety of vehicles? Maybe I'm behind the times but the non-graphics-related material; the gameplay, that's what I'm really into. And this has some good stuff.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
  5. Re:DICE game? by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Funny

    You'd be happy if Slashdot was owned by a EA subsidiary?

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    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
  6. Game Engine footage != Game footage by overnight_failure · · Score: 2

    Just before everyone wets their pants

  7. what? by bigdavex · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Since modern Star Wars cinema looks like a video game, this isn't much a stretch.

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    -Dave
  8. Fan boy review much? by o_ferguson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seriously, drop the false exuberance. As a long time fan of Star Wars and the Battlefront series, I'm more concerned about the stuff they killed from the title while reverting back ot the same name as the first version of the game. No single-player campaign. No content from Eps 1-3. No ground-to-ship warfare. This is basically just Battlefield with Starwars sprites added. Call it out for what it is.

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    - In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
    1. Re:Fan boy review much? by captjc · · Score: 2

      There is offline single player. I am a bit miffed on the space battles thing. However, the space-based combat in BF2 was hardly the end-all-be-all of Star Wars dogfighting. X Vs Tie or Rogue Squadron it was not. As for the Prequel era stuff, They more or less said it will be DLC While I hate EA's DLC practices and it is pretty shitty they can't include them what is a $70 game, if they can bring back Gungan genocide mode, playable Palpatine, and the Naboo and Mustafar maps, I might consider buying them.

      Either way, Battlefront 2 is still on steam and still works very well on Windows 7 (and Wine for the Mac / linux gamers) in 1920x1080.

      --
      Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
    2. Re:Fan boy review much? by kamapuaa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > No content from Eps 1-3.

      This is a complaint?

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  9. Microtransactions by FlynnMP3 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Your blaster battery is low. You can either wait and let it recharge or for 20 EA bucks, purchase an unlimited charge battery."

    1. Re:Microtransactions by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 2

      Followed by: I should have never bought that blaster battery from EA. I switched over to force sensitive for 100$. They didn't tell me advancing to deeper levels costs incrementally more money. But I get powers other players don't get, soooo worth it. The downside is that there is now permadeath for force sensitive characters, but I can revive myself at any time for 1$ with no loss of experience!

      --
      God spoke to me
  10. Gameplay looks great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The closed booth presentation they gave at Celebration shows actual gameplay on a PS4. It is not quite as great looking as the trailer, which is clearly using scripted animations and heavy editing but pretty impressive none the less. It's very beautiful, the sounds are incredibly authentic and the ATSTs and ATATs look and sound lethal.

    It felt like people died way too quickly for a video game but it looked, sounded, and felt very much like what it would be like to assault the shield generator bunker at the battle of Endor.

  11. It's a trick of your brain by Echo_Hotel · · Score: 2

    This is only going to look good for an hour or two till you've seen all the animations a few times and the lack of variation to things kicks the realism down a few notches.

  12. Re:Love the stupid energy shield by captjc · · Score: 2

    It's a game. It is supposed to be fun. If you want gritty realism, why are you looking at a Star Wars game? Go play America's Army

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  13. Look at the last few seconds of the video by Ragnarok89 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Come on people, why so much discussion and speculation? It is printed in black and white, plain as day: Frostbite game engine footage representative of PlayStation 4. Not actual gameplay. During the final few seconds where you see âoelearn moreâoe, the game studio logos,etc. Case closed. Discussion over.

  14. How long by Brad1138 · · Score: 2

    Till this is actual game play? My guess would be 10-20 years.

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    If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
    1. Re:How long by Brad1138 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That being said, it isn't the graphics that make a game good.

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      If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
  15. Re:DICE game? by peragrin · · Score: 2

    Sure EA doesn't upgrade anything. slashdot Beta would never have existed.

    not to mention the DRM would prevent AC's from getting their frosty piss.

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    i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
  16. It has been a tremendous week for Star Wars fans. by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    It has been a tremendous week for Star Wars fans.

    One got a job and one got laid?

    Not the same one, obviously. Let's not step into the realms of fantasy.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  17. Re:Love the stupid energy shield by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 2

    If you want gritty realism, join the actual army.